International Business Brilliance Awards 2025 | Employee Experience – Brilliance Awards Winner – Project Name: SPICE+ and NEXUS project | Brilliance in Intranet – Silver Award Winner: Schneider Electric

In this edition of Behind the Brilliance, we spotlight Schneider Electric, winner of two International Brilliance Awards™ — the Gold Award for Brilliance in Intranet and the Brilliance Award for Employee Experience — for their groundbreaking initiatives SPICE+ and NEXUS.

To bring this story to life, we spoke directly with the people behind the work: Aleksandra Kowalik, HR Product Owner, Karthika Warrier, Digital Product Owner, and Cecile Kozinski, Employee Communication Product Owner. Their insights offer a clear view into how these projects were shaped, delivered, and continuously improved.

Through our conversations, one message came through strongly. At the heart of SPICE+ is a simple but powerful aim: to create an employee experience that is seamless, inclusive, and accessible for everyone — from office-based teams to frontline colleagues. Available in eight languages and built with full digital accessibility in mind, SPICE+ ensures employees across the organisation have equal access to information, learning, and development opportunities.

As Aleksandra, Karthika, and Cecile explained, the success of both SPICE+ and NEXUS is rooted in close collaboration between HR, Digital, and Communications. Working within an agile framework, these teams aligned technology, strategy, and human needs, using ongoing employee feedback to guide each stage of development. The result is not just an intranet, but a true Experience Hub — one that actively supports productivity, wellbeing, and engagement across Schneider Electric’s global workforce.

1. Winning two awards for SPICE+ and NEXUS is a huge achievement. How does it feel to receive this recognition, and what do these awards represent for your team?

Receiving these awards is a tremendous honour and a testament to the hard work and dedication of our entire team. It is incredibly motivating and encourages us to continue striving for excellence and innovation in our future projects.

2. One of SPICE+’s core objectives was to enhance the employee experience across the board. How did you ensure that the platform catered effectively to all employees, including those in blue-collar roles?

Inclusion is at the core of whatever we do. For SPICE+, we brought two main aspects early on: multilingual and digital accessibility. SPICE+ is available in eight languages, covering the majority of our employees, and our team took part in accessibility trainings early in the project to ensure keyboard navigation, colour contrast and content published, to name a few, meet the digital accessibility requirements. SPICE+ is designed to be accessible to all employees, including our blue-collar colleagues who have access to it through mobile device and shopfloor kiosks. Finally, accessibility is a journey we are all on, and therefore we continue to train ourselves and work with experts to advance the experience.

3. The success of SPICE+ is due to the collaboration between HR, Digital, and Communications. Can you share how these teams worked together to create a unified platform?

From the outset, we ensured that each team had representation at every level of the project, including Sponsors and Steering Committee, Operational Steering Committee, Product Managers and Owners, and the Change Management team. The HR team managed HR integrations and fostered our champions community; the Communications team took charge of content, brand alignment, and publishers’ onboarding and engagement, while the Digital team was responsible for implementing functionalities and ensuring platform performance. Each team played a crucial role in the impact SPICE+ has on our employees. Additionally, our agile methodology encouraged every team member to voice their ideas and work together to resolve any conflicts. We articulated roles and responsibilities in our governance documentation to maintain clarity and accountability, but we also adjusted and moved with agility, always together. Collaboration has been the name of the game.

4. Employee feedback played a crucial role in the development of SPICE+. What steps did you take to gather and integrate feedback from employees into the design and functionality of the platform?

Creating a community of Champions with regularly scheduled workshops was our first step in gathering employees’ needs and feedback on our ideas. After that, we built and released the Beta platform – we tested and learned. We continued to collect feedback and amended our change management approach regularly, ensuring immediate action was taken, whether it was about solving a defect or adding a requirement to our list. Feedback is crucial to our success, and we continue listening to our employees through various channels, including the SPICE+ homepage, our Viva Engage community open to all employees, and our annual user satisfaction survey, which helps us identify needs and prioritise.

5. The Experience Hub is central to SPICE+’s user experience. How has this feature improved productivity and engagement across the company?

The Experience Hub has significantly enhanced productivity and engagement by centralising information that was previously scattered across the company. Employees no longer waste time searching for resources; everything they need is readily accessible, streamlining their workflow and boosting efficiency.

6. Onboarding new employees can often be a challenge. How does SPICE+’s tailored onboarding experience help new hires feel welcomed and supported from day one?

Our tailored onboarding experience ensures new hires are greeted with a positive intranet digital experience, complementary to their official onboarding program driven by managers. The SPICE+ onboarding experience provides new comers with all the essential information in one place, including their onboarding checklist, mandatory policies, and training schedules. Additionally, it offers easy access to contact details for key individuals like their manager, HR Business Partner, and buddy, facilitating a smooth and supportive integration.

7. Well-being and development are key focuses of SPICE+. How have features like the well-being cards and training reminders impacted employee satisfaction and personal growth?

The well-being cards and training reminders have positively impacted employee satisfaction and personal growth, acting as prompts encouraging employees to make time for these important topics. Busy agendas can easily take over, so having action-oriented messages around self-care and professional growth helps us foster a healthier and more productive work environment for all.

8. Adoption of new platforms can be challenging. How did you ensure a smooth transition and successful adoption of SPICE+ across your global workforce?

We facilitated a smooth transition and successful adoption of SPICE+ by organising introductory sessions, providing comprehensive support materials, and creating short instructional videos for specific modules. Additionally, we held dedicated sessions for new joiners to ensure they could start using SPICE+ effectively from their first moments in the company. It all comes down to encouraging partnership and offering support, while also finding ways to do this at scale.

9. Lastly, with SPICE+ and the NEXUS project in mind, what does ‘brilliance’ mean to you, and how do you think it reflects the success of these initiatives?

To us, brilliance means delivering exceptional and innovative solutions tailored to our diverse and unique needs. From the outset, our goal was to create something extraordinary for our employees, and we believe that our commitment to providing exceptional content, tools and experiences reflects the true essence of brilliance.

Celebrating Brilliance

Schneider Electric’s achievements with SPICE+ and NEXUS reflect a deep commitment to innovation, inclusivity, and collaboration. By putting people at the centre of technology, they’ve created more than an intranet — they’ve built a space for growth, wellbeing, and connection. This is what brilliance looks like when technology meets purpose.